NCAA Basketball: Should Someone Like Joe Lunardi Pick the Brackets From Now on?

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Given All The Bracket Controversy, Should Someone Like Joe Lunardi Pick The NCAA Tournament Field?

The NCAA tournament field of 68 is set. The announcement was made on Sunday evening and was met with a mountain of controversy. Everything ranging from some of the teams that got in to the way that teams were seeded is being seriously scrutinized today.

The two most controversial choices among the teams that were selected for the tournament are UAB and VCU. Everyone has an opinion on these two teams, and it's not very kind to either program.

Eamonn Brennan from ESPN.com wrote about Colorado's omission and UAB's inclusion in perhaps the nicest possible way. "If you're interested in this little thing called "wins," the two resumes don't really compare," he wrote. "Colorado has six top-50 RPI victories; UAB has none. Colorado beat No. 5 seed Kansas State three times and No. 4 seed Texas once. UAB beat...VCU? Kent State? UTEP?"

He then brings up the difference in the teams RPI - Colorado was 66, UAB was 31. The only reason that the difference was so great in this ranking is because Colorado didn't play anyone out of conference and UAB did. The problem is UAB didn't beat any of the nonconference teams that they played - Duke and Georgia were the two most noteworthy.

The head of the selection committee, and Ohio State Athletic Director, Gene Smith was on television with George Smith from ESPN to defend the selection of both VCU and UAB. "We always look at how you did....and where you play, and look at how well a job they did when they played," Smith said. He gave the politically correct answers, as you would expect, but didn't really answer why they got in.

Once again the question that needs to be asked - Should an independent third party be selecting the NCAA tournament teams?

We know that the selection committee is run by a bunch of people that are affiliated with certain schools. This would seem to create a conflict of interest when they are picking teams to be in the tournament.

This is why someone with a great college basketball resume and a history of picking NCAA tournament teams should be brought in to at least help when selecting the teams. Someone like Joe Lunardi, ESPN's resident bracketologist.

No one studies the selection process more than Lunardi does. He understands exactly what the committee looks for (or what they should be looking for) when they pick these teams. He has a great track record of picking teams and he has matched the committee selections around 98 percent of the time. On the rare occasions that he has made an error it has been because the committee did something outlandish...like they did this year.

We can debate the merits of tournament teams all day long (most of us probably will today), but there is no way that everyone will be satisfied. There simply aren't enough spots in the tournament to do that, but so long as the selections aren't as egregious as these two, then everything should be fine.

There are hidden agendas within the selection committee every single year, which is why it makes zero sense for these people to be selecting teams to play in a tournament. Plus, this year there were three men on the committee who had no experience with college basketball. The NCAA needs to delegate the responsibility of selecting tournament teams to people who really understand what the tournament is about and what teams need to accomplish in order to make it in.

Check out Bleacher Report's NCAA Tournament page by clicking here.

Download the NCAA Tournament Bracket by clicking here.

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